Wearing a “Vegas Strong” baseball cap, Jessica Flores of Long Beach, left, learns how to apply a tourniquet to an injury as UC Irvine Medical Center nurse Christy Carroll instructs on Saturday, November 18, 2017. Flores and a group of friends escaped injury last month when a gunman opened fire and killed 58 people in Las Vegas. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

UC Irvine Medical Center nurse Christy Carroll teaches “Stop the Bleed,” a course that teaches techniques to stop life-threatening bleeding until first responders arrive. It is open to the public on the third Saturday of each month in Orange.(Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Heather Siegal of Westminster embraces her boyfriend Alex Diaz of Culver City at the “Stop the Bleed” course at UC Irvine Medial Center in Orange on Saturday, November 18, 2017. They escaped the Route 91 Harvest concert in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire and killed 58 people. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Wearing a “Vegas Strong” baseball cap, Jessica Flores of Long Beach, left, learns how to apply a tourniquet to an injury as UC Irvine Medical Center nurse Christy Carroll instructs on Saturday, November 18, 2017. Flores and a group of friends escaped injury last month when a gunman opened fire and killed 58 people in Las Vegas. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

UC Irvine Medical Center nurse Christy Carroll shows where to apply a tourniquet to a gunshot wound during the “Stop the Bleed,” course that is open to the public on the third Saturday of each month in Orange. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jessica Flores, of Long Beach, gets choked up while talking about the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas last month. She and her friends escaped physical injury but 58 concert-goers were killed and more than 500 were injured. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

It’s been 48 days since Jessica Flores hid inside a walk-in refrigerator with 60 other people who’d escaped — some with gunshot wounds — from the Route 91 concert in Las Vegas.

In the chaos after Stephen Paddock opened fire from his hotel window on the crowd below, Flores had gotten separated from all but one of the 11 friends and family members she’d convinced to come to the show. The fridge was cold, but she was shaking with panic at the thought that she might never see her loved ones again.

Saturday, six of those loved ones reunited at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange for a class on how to provide lifesaving care in the critical moments following a major accident or trauma.

“When I was in that situation, I was frozen at first,” said Flores, 46, of Long Beach. “This class made me feel like I’m prepared. Now I’m not going to be afraid to help.”

The class was created by the American College of Surgeons in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The idea is to give everyone information and skills they need to act as “immediate responders,” stopping blood loss until medical personnel can help.

“People can bleed out within a few minutes,” said Christy Carroll, a registered nurse and trauma prevention coordinator at UC Irvine Medical Center.

“Most traumatic deaths come from blood loss,” she said. “And you can stop that. You can control that.”

Staff at UC Irvine Medical Center started training for the course in April, Carroll said. They held their first class in October for six people. An early morning class Saturday quickly booked up with 10 new students. But Carroll added a second session when Flores reached out and shared her story.

Flores and her sister, Jeannine, attended the Route 91 concert in 2016. They loved the music and friendly atmosphere, so Flores “rallied all the troops” and got a group of longtime friends to drive out to Vegas for this year’s festival.

By the time Jason Aldean took the stage just before 10 p.m., her group had scattered. Her sister’s 16-year-old daughter was near the front with her friend. Another group was near the back. And she took a couple friends with her for a restroom break just as shots started to ring out.

As video footage has shown, she said no one really reacted to the first or second shot. Flores thought it was fireworks or a speaker malfunction. But her sister and two of her friends are officers with the Los Angeles Police Department, and they quickly realized they were hearing gunfire.

Flores’ friends each took one of her arms, and they started to run.

It wasn’t until they made it into the refrigerator inside Hooter’s Casino that Flores was able to reach her sister and other friends by phone.

All 12 of the people in Flores’ group managed to escape without physical injuries. But the emotional trauma has been difficult to cope with, she said.

“The month of October was very difficult for me,” she said, her hair tucked in a “Vegas Strong” baseball cap. “I couldn’t be out alone. I couldn’t be in large crowds.”

Therapy has been a big help, she said. And, though Saturday’s class did trigger some difficult memories, she said it also left her feeling more in control.

“Preparation is the best prevention,” Carroll, the instructor, said. “You may not be able to prevent the incident, but you may be able to prevent the death that might come from it.”

Carroll walked Flores and her friends through how to identify a life-threatening injury and how to respond.

The friends took turns applying tourniquets to a plastic model of a leg. Next they learned to stuff mock gunshot and stab wounds with blood-clotting gauze, then apply as much pressure as they could.

Alex Diaz of Culver City asked about using a belt if a tourniquet isn’t available — something all the friends saw happen at the Route 91 festival.

Flores recalled someone using the tubing that held a doctor’s stethoscope to cut off bleeding. Another friend said people stuffed wounds with tampons in lieu of gauze.

Hearing the students describe what they went through made Saturday’s class an unusually powerful one, Carroll said, as she blinked back tears. She hopes their stories will motivate more people to seek out training.

UC Irvine Medical Center offers its “Stop the Bleed” course for $30 on the third Saturday of each month. The next open session is in February, with registration available at UCIrvineHealth.org/events.

Brooke Edwards Staggs is a general assignment reporter with a focus on covering the politics, business, health and culture of cannabis. Journalism has led Staggs to a manhunt in Las Vegas, a zero gravity flight over Queens and a fishing village in Ghana. The Big Bear native is addicted to education. She earned her bachelors degree in English from California Baptist University, then got her master's in education as she taught high school English in the Inland Empire. After four years in the classroom, she left in 2006 to be a student again herself, earning a masters degree in journalism from New York University while interning and freelancing for a variety of publications. She sees journalism as another form of teaching, helping readers make informed decisions and better understand the world around them. Staggs spent five years as a staff writer then city editor at the Daily Press in Victorville. She won several awards for her work there, including best breaking news story from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for her tale of a teen who shot his father in a hunting accident. She joined the Orange County Register in January 2013, covering several south Orange County communities and the city of Tustin before taking on the marijuana beat in February 2016. On occasion, she also teaches community college and ghostwrites nonfiction books. Staggs loves dancing and new adventures. She hates water slides and injustice. If she doesn’t get right back to you, there’s a good chance she’s sitting with her DJ husband on a plane or train or boat destined for somewhere – anywhere – they’ve never been.

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